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Eric Dye

I am a blogger, business owner and lover of coffee. I spend most of my time as Programs Director for Open Church, but you'll also find me as a writer and editor for ChurchMag, as well as working on Live Theme and ChurchMag Press. All while enjoying my family and sipping espresso in Italy.

The “how is it used in the office” tells a big part of why Android is catching up. While Apple’s lead in apps is certainly impressive (and they’re great), the most popular apps remain email and web and probably will for a while.

Android’s mail app is perhaps slightly better than the iPad, though they’re close. However, if you use Gmail or Google Apps, it’s 10x better on Android because it keeps all of the Gmail goodness intact — stars, one-tap archive, conversations, etc.

The web browser is also superior on Android, though iOS is making it a much better fight with iOS5.

The other Apple oddity is the lack of widgets. While they’re of arguable usefulness on a phone, they’re awesome on a tablet. I was shocked that they’re not included in the upcoming iOS5. I think that’s quite a blow to the iPad.

The flip side is that the iPad hardware is excellent, the smart cover is quite slick, and the OS as a whole is more stable and responsive. Honeycomb 3.2 is much closer, but iOS is still more stable overall.

To answer your question, James, the tl;dr version is this:

1 — If you use Gmail or Google Apps, get an Android tablet.
2 — If you use any other mail provider, get an iPad.

It’s 10″ single resistive (1024×600), but has android 2.2 and can do flash. All I’d use it for would be testing sites on a small screen, probably a screen reader and I’d put dropbox and youversion on (and of course angry birds!). So I think it would do me!